Ammunition disarming processes are somewhat known in the armament sector. On one hand it is convenient to recover the powder from unused elements, and on the other hand it is convenient to render other potentially hazardous elements inert.
A known manner of disposing of obsolete ammunition is to introduce it in furnaces while still armed, which requires a sizeable power consumption and results in a large amount of gases that have to be filtered and processed to reduce emissions which, even after that, are still quite considerable. This noticeably affects demilitarization costs and the economic return on the recovered/recycled materials.
To date, there is still no machine that integrally and automatically performs all the tasks of disarming ammunition cartridges in a relatively reduced space that can be easily moved in a truck and complying with all mandatory safety conditions of a task of such importance. Disarming processes in the current state of the art are performed manually or semi-automatically and are not usually complete, leaving parts to be done in furnaces. Examples comprised in the state of the art include mechanisms for extracting bullets from medium and large gauge projectiles (e.g. “Demil plant” of Konstrukta industry). The features of these mechanisms make it necessary to build infrastructures that cannot be moved once built, which makes it impossible to use them in those places where ammunition has been disposed of. Furthermore, they are mechanisms that allow only one type of ammunition, so it is not always compatible for any user.
The present invention does not require using a furnace for rendering the hazardous elements inert (non-detonated casings, etc.), saving energy and safety and pollutant emission problems. Also, with minimal involvement of the operator, consisting of feeding the inlet hopper with the cartridges, all the elements are automatically separated, only having to periodically emptying powder from the outlet hoppers. After each step of the disarming process, control elements verify that said step is carried out correctly so that potentially hazardous manipulations are not performed. The resulting materials are entirely recyclable and maintain their market value because their conditions are not altered by the incineration/detonation in the furnace (powder, lead, steel, brass).